Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English
anthropologist,
social scientist,
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
,
visual anthropologist
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science an ...
,
semiotician, and
cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include ''
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
''Steps to an Ecology of Mind'' is a collection of Gregory Bateson's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and epistemology. It was originally published by Chandle ...
'' (1972) and ''Mind and Nature'' (1979).
In
Palo Alto, California, Bateson and colleagues developed the
double-bind theory of
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
.
Bateson's interest in
systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the
Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences. He was interested in the relationship of these fields to
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
. His association with the editor and author
Stewart Brand helped widen his influence.
Early life and education
Bateson was born in
Grantchester in
Cambridgeshire, England, on 9 May 1904. He was the third and youngest son of (Caroline) Beatrice Durham and the distinguished geneticist
William Bateson. He was named Gregory after
Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who founded the modern science of
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...
.
The younger Bateson attended
Charterhouse School from 1917 to 1921, obtained a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...
at
St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1925, and continued at Cambridge from 1927 to 1929.
According to Lipset (1982), Bateson's life was greatly affected by the death of his two brothers. John Bateson (1898–1918), the eldest of the three, was killed in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
. Martin Bateson (1900–1922), the second brother, was then expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a scientist, but came into conflict with his father over his ambition to become a poet and playwright. The resulting stress, combined with a disappointment in love, resulted in Martin's public suicide by gunshot under the statue of
Anteros
In Greek mythology, Anteros (; Ancient Greek: Ἀντέρως ''Antérōs'') was the god of requited love (literally "love returned" or "counter-love") and also the punisher of those who scorn love and the advances of others, or the avenger of ...
in
Piccadilly Circus on 22 April 1922, which was John's birthday. After this event, which transformed a private family tragedy into public scandal, the parents' ambitious expectations fell on Gregory.
Career
In 1928, Bateson lectured in linguistics at the
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
.
From 1931 to 1937, he was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. He spent the years before
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
in the South Pacific in
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
and
Bali doing anthropology.
In the 1940s, he helped extend
systems theory and
cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences.
Although initially reluctant to join the intelligence services, Bateson served in
OSS
OSS or Oss may refer to:
Places
* Oss, a city and municipality in the Netherlands
* Osh Airport, IATA code OSS
People with the name
* Oss (surname), a surname
Arts and entertainment
* ''O.S.S.'' (film), a 1946 World War II spy film about ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
along with dozens of other anthropologists.
[Price, David H. (Dr.)]
"Gregory Bateson and the OSS: World War II and Bateson's Assessment of Applied Anthropology."
currentconcerns.ch He was stationed in the same offices as
Julia Child (then Julia McWilliams),
Paul Cushing Child, and others. He spent much of the war designing '
black propaganda
Black propaganda is a form of propaganda intended to create the impression that it was created by those it is supposed to discredit. Black propaganda contrasts with gray propaganda, which does not identify its source, as well as white propagand ...
' radio broadcasts. He was deployed on covert operations in Burma and Thailand, and worked in China, India, and Ceylon as well. Bateson used his theory of
schismogenesis to help foster discord among enemy fighters. He was upset by his wartime experience and disagreed with his wife over whether science should be applied to social planning or used only to foster understanding rather than action.
In
Palo Alto, California, Bateson developed the
double-bind theory, together with his colleagues
Donald Jackson,
Jay Haley and
John H. Weakland, also known as the ''
Bateson Project
The Bateson Project (1953-1963) was the name given to a ground-breaking collaboration organized by Gregory Bateson which was responsible for some of the most important papers and innovations in communication and psychotherapy in the 1950s and earl ...
'' (1953–1963).
In 1956, he became a
naturalised citizen of the United States.
Bateson was one of the original members of the core group of the
Macy conferences in
cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences.
In the 1970s, he taught at the Humanistic Psychology Institute in San Francisco, renamed the
Saybrook University, and in 1972 joined the faculty of
Kresge College
Kresge College is one of the residential colleges that make up the University of California, Santa Cruz. Founded in 1971 and named after Sebastian Kresge, Kresge college is located on the western edge of the UCSC campus. Kresge is the sixth of t ...
at the
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the ed ...
.
In 1976, he was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
.
California Governor
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
appointed him to the
Regents of the University of California, a position he held until his death, although he resigned from the Special Research Projects committee in 1979 in opposition to the university's work on
nuclear weapons.
Bateson spent the last decade of his life developing a "meta-science" of
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
to bring together the various early forms of systems theory developing in different fields of science.
Personal life
From 1936 until 1950, he was married to American cultural anthropologist
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...
. He applied his knowledge to the war effort before moving to the United States.
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
(2007). "Gregory Bateson". Retrieved fro
Britannica Concise
5 August 2007 Bateson and Mead had a daughter,
Mary Catherine Bateson (1939–2021), who also became an anthropologist. Bateson separated from Mead in 1947, and they were divorced in 1950.
[''To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead''. Margaret M. Caffey and Patricia A. Francis, eds. With foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson. New York. Basic Books. 2006.] In 1951, he married Elizabeth "Betty" Sumner, the daughter of the
Episcopalian Bishop of Oregon,
Walter Taylor Sumner. They had a son, John Sumner Bateson (1951–2015), as well as twins who died shortly after birth in 1953. Bateson and Sumner were divorced in 1957, after which Bateson was married a third time, to therapist and social worker Lois Cammack (born 1928), in 1961. They had one daughter, Nora Bateson (born 1969).
Bateson was a lifelong atheist, as his family had been for several generations. He was a member of
William Irwin Thompson's esoteric
Lindisfarne Association.
Bateson died on July 4, 1980, at age 76, in the guest house of the
San Francisco Zen Center.
The 2014 novel ''Euphoria'' by
Lily King is a fictionalized account of Bateson's relationships with Mead and
Reo Fortune in pre-WWII New Guinea.
Philosophy
Where others might see a set of inexplicable details, Bateson perceived simple relationships.
In "From Versailles to Cybernetics," Bateson argues that the history of the twentieth century can be perceived as the history of a malfunctioning relationship. In his view, the
Treaty of Versailles exemplifies a whole pattern of human relationships based on betrayal and hate. He therefore claims that the treaty of Versailles and the development of
cybernetics—which for him represented the possibility of ''improved'' relationships—are the only two anthropologically important events of the twentieth century.
Work
New Guinea
Bateson's beginning years as an anthropologist were spent floundering, lost without a specific objective in mind. He began in 1927 with a trip to
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
, spurred by mentor
A. C. Haddon
Alfred Cort Haddon, Sc.D., FRS, FRGS FRAI (24 May 1855 – 20 April 1940, Cambridge) was an influential British anthropologist and ethnologist.
Initially a biologist, who achieved his most notable fieldwork, with W.H.R. Rivers, C.G. Seligma ...
.
[Lipset, 1982 ] His goal, as suggested by Haddon, was to explore the effects of contact between the
Sepik natives and whites. Unfortunately for Bateson, his time spent with the
Baining of New Guinea was halted and difficult. The Baining were not particularly accommodating of his research, and he missed out on many communal activities. They were also not inclined to share their religious practices with him.
He left the Baining frustrated. Next, he set out to study the
Sulka, belonging to another native population of New Guinea. Although the Sulka were very different from the Baining and their culture more easily observed, he felt their culture was dying, which left him dispirited and discouraged.
He experienced more success with the
Iatmul people, an indigenous people living along New Guinea's
Sepik River. The observations he made among the Iatmul people allowed him to develop his concept of
schismogenesis. In his 1936 book ''Naven'' he defined the term, based on his Iatmul fieldwork, as "a process of differentiation in the norms of individual behaviour resulting from cumulative interaction between individuals" (p. 175). The book was named after the 'naven' rite, an honorific ceremony among the Iatmul, still continued today, that celebrates first-time cultural achievements. The ceremony entails behaviours that are otherwise forbidden during everyday social life. For example, men and women reverse and exaggerate gender roles; men dress in women's skirts, and women dress in men's attire and ornaments.
Additionally, some women smear mud in the faces of other relatives, beat them with sticks, and hurl bawdy insults. Mothers may drop to the ground so their celebrated 'child' walks over them. And during a male rite, a mother's brother may slide his buttocks down the leg of his honoured sister's son, a complex gesture of masculine birthing, pride, and insult, rarely performed before women, that brings the honoured sister's son to tears. Bateson suggested the influence of a circular system of causation, and proposed that:
Women watched for the spectacular performances of the men, and there can be no reasonable doubt that the presence of an audience is a very important factor in shaping the men's behavior. In fact, it is probable that the men are more exhibitionistic because the women admire their performances. Conversely, there can be no doubt that the spectacular behavior is a stimulus which summons the audience together, promoting in the women the appropriate behavior.
In short, the behaviour of person X affects person Y, and the reaction of person Y to person X's behaviour will then affect person X's behaviour, which in turn will affect person Y, and so on. Bateson called this the "vicious circle."
He then discerned two models of schismogenesis: symmetrical and complementary.
Symmetrical relationships are those in which the two parties are equals, competitors, such as in sports. Complementary relationships feature an unequal balance, such as dominance-submission (parent-child), or exhibitionism-spectatorship (performer-audience). Bateson's experiences with the Iatmul led him to publish a book in 1936 titled ''Naven: A Survey of the Problems suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe drawn from Three Points of View'' (Cambridge University Press). The book proved to be a watershed in anthropology and modern social science.
Until Bateson published ''Naven,'' most anthropologists assumed a realist approach to studying culture, in which one simply described social reality. Bateson's book argued that this approach was naive, since an anthropologist's account of a culture was always and fundamentally shaped by whatever theory the anthropologist employed to define and analyse the data. To think otherwise, stated Bateson, was to be guilty of what
Alfred North Whitehead called the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." There was no singular or self-evident way to understand the Iatmul naven rite. Instead, Bateson analysed the rite from three unique points of view:
sociological,
ethological, and eidological. The book, then, was not a presentation of anthropological analysis but an epistemological account that explored the nature of anthropological analysis itself.
The sociological point of view sought to identify how the ritual helped bring about social integration. In the 1930s, most anthropologists understood marriage rules to regularly ensure that social groups renewed their alliances. But Iatmul, argued Bateson, had contradictory marriage rules. Marriage, in other words, could not guarantee that a marriage between two clans would at some definite point in the future recur. Instead, Bateson continued, the naven rite filled this function by regularly ensuring exchanges of food, valuables, and sentiment between mothers' brothers and their sisters' children, or between separate lineages. Naven, from this angle, held together the different social groups of each village into a unified whole.
The ethological point of view interpreted the ritual in terms of the conventional emotions associated with normative male and female behaviour, which Bateson called ethos. In Iatmul culture, observed Bateson, men and women lived different emotional lives. For example, women were rather submissive and took delight in the achievement of others; men fiercely competitive and flamboyant. During the ritual, however, men celebrated the achievement of their nieces and nephews while women were given ritual license to act raucously. In effect, naven allowed men and women to experience momentarily the emotional lives of each other, and thereby to achieve a level of psychological integration.
The third and final point of view, the eidological, was the least successful. Here Bateson endeavoured to correlate the organisation structure of the naven ceremony with the habitual patterns of Iatmul thought. Much later, Bateson would harness the very same idea to the development of the
double-bind theory of schizophrenia.
In the Epilogue to the book, Bateson was clear: "The writing of this book has been an experiment, or rather a series of experiments, in methods of thinking about anthropological material." That is to say, his overall point was not to describe Iatmul culture of the naven ceremony but to explore how different modes of analysis, using different premises and analytic frameworks, could lead to different explanations of the same sociocultural phenomenon. Not only did Bateson's approach re-shape fundamentally the anthropological approach to culture, but the naven rite itself has remained a locus classicus in the discipline. In fact, the meaning of the ritual continues to inspire anthropological analysis.
Bali
Bateson next travelled to
Bali with his new wife
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...
to study the people of the village Bajoeng Gede. Here, Lipset states, "in the short history of
ethnographic fieldwork, film was used both on a large scale and as the primary research tool."
Bateson took 25,000 photographs of their Balinese subjects.
He discovered that the people of Bajoeng Gede raised their children very unlike children raised in Western societies. Instead of attention being paid to a child who was displaying a climax of emotion (love or anger), Balinese mothers would ignore them. Bateson notes, "The child responds to
mother'sadvances with either affection or temper, but the response falls into a vacuum. In Western cultures, such sequences lead to small climaxes of love or anger, but not so in Bali. At the moment when a child throws its arms around the mother's neck or bursts into tears, the mother's attention wanders".
This model of stimulation and refusal was also seen in other areas of the culture. Bateson later described the style of Balinese relations as stasis instead of schismogenesis. Their interactions were "muted" and did not follow the schismogenetic process because they did not often escalate competition, dominance, or submission.
New Guinea, 1938
In 1938, Bateson and Mead returned to the Sepik River, and settled into the village of Tambunum, where Bateson had spent three days in the 1920s. They aimed to replicate the Balinese project on the relationship between childraising and temperament, and between conventions of the body – such as pose, grimace, holding infants, facial expressions, etc. – reflected wider cultural themes and values. Bateson snapped some 10,000 black and white photographs, and Mead typed thousands of pages of fieldnotes. But Bateson and Mead never published anything substantial from this research.
Bateson's encounter with Mead on the Sepik river (Chapter 16) and their life together in Bali (Chapter 17) is described in Mead's autobiography ''Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years'' (
Angus and Robertson. London. 1973). Their daughter Catherine's birth in New York on 8 December 1939 is recounted in Chapter 18.
Double bind theory of schizophrenia
In 1956 in
Palo Alto, Bateson and his colleagues
Donald Jackson,
Jay Haley, and
John Weakland articulated a related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from
double bind
A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more reciprocally conflicting messages. In some scenarios (e.g. within families or romantic relationships) this can be emotionally distressing, creati ...
situations. The
double bind
A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more reciprocally conflicting messages. In some scenarios (e.g. within families or romantic relationships) this can be emotionally distressing, creati ...
refers to a communication paradox described first in families with a schizophrenic member. The first place where double binds were described (though not named as such) was according to Bateson, in
Samuel Butler's ''
The Way of All Flesh'' (a semi-autobiographical novel about Victorian hypocrisy and cover-up).
Full double bind requires several conditions to be met:
# The victim of double bind receives contradictory injunctions or emotional messages on different levels of communication (for example, love is expressed by words, and
hate
Hatred is an intense negative emotional response towards certain people, things or ideas, usually related to opposition or revulsion toward something. Hatred is often associated with intense feelings of anger, contempt, and disgust. Hatred is s ...
or detachment by nonverbal behaviour; or a child is encouraged to speak freely, but criticised or silenced whenever he or she actually does so).
# No metacommunication is possible – for example, asking which of the two messages is valid or describing the communication as making no sense.
# The victim cannot leave the communication field.
# Failing to fulfill the contradictory injunctions is punished (for example, by withdrawal of love).
The strange behaviour and speech of schizophrenics was explained by Bateson et al. as an expression of this paradoxical situation, and were seen in fact as an adaptive response, which should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience.
The double bind was originally presented (probably mainly under the influence of Bateson's psychiatric co-workers) as an explanation of part of the
etiology of
schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social w ...
. Currently, it is considered to be more important as an example of Bateson's approach to the complexities of communication which is what he understood it to be.
The role of somatic change in evolution
Bateson writes about how the actual physical changes in the body occur within
evolutionary
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variati ...
processes.
He describes this through the introduction of the concept of "economics of flexibility".
In his conclusion he makes seven statements or theoretical positions which may be supported by his ideology.
The first is the idea that although environmental stresses have theoretically been believed to guide or dictate the changes in the
soma
Soma may refer to:
Businesses and brands
* SOMA (architects), a New York–based firm of architects
* Soma (company), a company that designs eco-friendly water filtration systems
* SOMA Fabrications, a builder of bicycle frames and other bicycle ...
(physical body), the introduction of new stresses do not automatically result in the physical changes necessary for survival as suggested by original evolutionary theory.
In fact the introduction of these stresses can greatly weaken the organism. An example that he gives is the sheltering of a sick person from the weather or the fact that someone who works in an office would have a hard time working as a rock climber and vice versa. The second position states that though "the economics of flexibility has a logical structure-each successive demand upon flexibility fractioning the set of available possibilities".
This means that theoretically speaking each demand or variable creates a new set of possibilities. Bateson's third conclusion is "that the
genotypic change commonly makes demand upon the adjustive ability of the soma".
This, he states, is the commonly held belief among biologists although there is no evidence to support the claim. Added demands are made on the soma by sequential genotypic modifications is the fourth position. Through this he suggests the following three expectations:
# The idea that organisms that have been through recent modifications will be delicate.
# The belief that these organisms will become progressively harmful or dangerous.
# That over time these new "breeds" will become more resistant to the stresses of the environment and change in
genetic traits.
The fifth theoretical position which Bateson believes is supported by his data is that characteristics within an organism that have been modified due to environmental stresses may coincide with genetically determined attributes.
His sixth position is that it takes less economic flexibility to create somatic change than it does to cause a genotypic modification. The seventh and final theory he believes to be supported is the idea that in rare occasions there will be populations whose changes will not be in accordance with the thesis presented within this paper. According to Bateson, none of these positions (at the time) could be tested but he called for the creation of a test which could possibly prove or disprove the theoretical positions suggested within.
Ecological anthropology and cybernetics
In his book ''
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
''Steps to an Ecology of Mind'' is a collection of Gregory Bateson's short works over his long and varied career. Subject matter includes essays on anthropology, cybernetics, psychiatry, and epistemology. It was originally published by Chandle ...
'', Bateson applied
cybernetics to the field of
ecological anthropology and the concept of
homeostasis
In biology, homeostasis ( British also homoeostasis) (/hɒmɪə(ʊ)ˈsteɪsɪs/) is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning for the organism and ...
.
He saw the world as a series of systems containing those of individuals, societies and ecosystems. Within each system is found competition and dependency. Each of these systems has adaptive changes which depend upon
feedback loops to control balance by changing multiple variables. Bateson believed that these self-correcting systems were conservative by controlling exponential slippage. He saw the natural ecological system as innately good as long as it was allowed to maintain homeostasis
and that the key unit of survival in evolution was an organism and its environment.
Bateson also viewed that all three systems of the individual, society and ecosystem were all together a part of one supreme cybernetic system that controls everything instead of just interacting systems.
This supreme cybernetic system is beyond the self of the individual and could be equated to what many people refer to as God, though Bateson referred to it as Mind.
While Mind is a cybernetic system, it can only be distinguished as a whole and not parts. Bateson felt Mind was immanent in the messages and pathways of the supreme cybernetic system. He saw the root of system collapses as a result of
Occidental
Occidental may refer to:
* Western world (of or pertaining to)
Places
* Occidental, California, a town in Sonoma County, California, US
* Occidental Park (Seattle)
Other uses
* Interlingue, a constructed language formerly known as Occidental
...
or
Western epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
. According to Bateson, consciousness is the bridge between the cybernetic networks of individual, society and ecology and the mismatch between the systems due to improper understanding will result in the degradation of the entire supreme cybernetic system or Mind. Bateson thought that consciousness as developed through Occidental epistemology was at direct odds with Mind.
At the heart of the matter is scientific
hubris. Bateson argues that Occidental epistemology perpetuates a system of understanding which is purpose or means-to-an-end driven.
Purpose controls attention and narrows perception, thus limiting what comes into consciousness and therefore limiting the amount of wisdom that can be generated from the perception. Additionally Occidental epistemology propagates the false notion that man exists outside Mind and this leads man to believe in what Bateson calls the philosophy of control based upon false knowledge.
Bateson presents Occidental epistemology as a method of thinking that leads to a mindset in which man exerts an
autocratic rule over all cybernetic systems.
In exerting his autocratic rule man changes the environment to suit him and in doing so he unbalances the natural cybernetic system of controlled competition and mutual dependency. The purpose-driven accumulation of knowledge ignores the supreme cybernetic system and leads to the eventual breakdown of the entire system. Bateson claims that man will never be able to control the whole system because it does not operate in a
linear
Linearity is the property of a mathematical relationship ('' function'') that can be graphically represented as a straight line. Linearity is closely related to '' proportionality''. Examples in physics include rectilinear motion, the linear ...
fashion and if man creates his own rules for the system, he opens himself up to becoming a slave to the self-made system due to the non-linear nature of cybernetics. Lastly, man's technological prowess combined with his scientific hubris gives him the potential to irrevocably damage and destroy the supreme cybernetic system, instead of just disrupting the system temporally until the system can self-correct.
Bateson argues for a position of humility and acceptance of the natural cybernetic system instead of scientific arrogance as a solution.
He believes that humility can come about by abandoning the view of operating through consciousness alone. Consciousness is only one way in which to obtain knowledge and without complete knowledge of the entire cybernetic system disaster is inevitable. The limited conscious must be combined with the unconscious in complete synthesis. Only when thought and emotion are combined in whole is man able to obtain complete knowledge. He believed that religion and art are some of the few areas in which a man is acting as a whole individual in complete consciousness. By acting with this greater wisdom of the supreme cybernetic system as a whole man can change his relationship to Mind from one of
schism, in which he is endlessly tied up in constant competition, to one of
complementarity. Bateson argues for a culture that promotes the most general wisdom and is able to flexibly change within the supreme cybernetic system.
Other terms used by Bateson
*
Abduction
Abduction may refer to:
Media
Film and television
* "Abduction" (''The Outer Limits''), a 2001 television episode
* " Abduction" (''Death Note'') a Japanese animation television series
* " Abductions" (''Totally Spies!''), a 2002 episode of an ...
. Used by Bateson to refer to a third scientific methodology (along with
induction and
deduction) which was central to his own holistic and qualitative approach. Refers to a method of comparing patterns of relationship, and their symmetry or asymmetry (as in, for example,
comparative anatomy), especially in complex organic (or mental) systems. The term was originally coined by American Philosopher/Logician
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...
, who used it to refer to the process by which scientific hypotheses are generated.
*Criteria of Mind (from ''Mind and Nature A Necessary Unity''):
#Mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components.
#The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference.
#Mental process requires collateral energy.
#Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.
#In mental process the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (that is, coded versions) of the difference which preceded them.
#The description and classification of these processes of transformation discloses a hierarchy of
logical types immanent in the phenomena.
*Creatura and
Pleroma. Borrowed from
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...
who applied these
gnostic
Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized p ...
terms in his "Seven Sermons To the Dead". Like the
Hindu
Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
term
maya, the basic idea captured in this distinction is that meaning and organisation are projected onto the world. Pleroma refers to the non-living world that is undifferentiated by subjectivity; Creatura for the living world, subject to perceptual difference, distinction, and information.
*Deuterolearning. A term he coined in the 1940s referring to the organisation of learning, or learning to learn:
*
Schismogenesis – the emergence of divisions within social groups.
* Information – Bateson defined information as "a difference which makes a difference." This definition, however, is taken out of its context and lacks Bateson's reference to the requirement of energy to make a difference, and his definition of a difference as a matter that can be abstract also. For Bateson, information in fact mediated
Alfred Korzybski's
map–territory relation
The map–territory relation is the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it. Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski remarked that ...
, and thereby resolved, according to Bateson, the mind-body problem.
Continuing extensions of his work
In 1984, his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson published a joint biography of her parents (Bateson and
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...
).
His other daughter the filmmaker Nora Bateson released ''An Ecology of Mind'', a documentary that premiered at the
Vancouver International Film Festival. This film was selected as the audience favourite with the ''Morton Marcus Documentary Feature Award'' at the 2011
Santa Cruz Film Festival, and honoured with the 2011 ''John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in the Field of Media Ecology'' by the
Media Ecology Association.
The Bateson Idea Group (BIG) initiated a web presence in October 2010. The group collaborated with the
American Society for Cybernetics for a joint meeting in July 2012 at the
Asilomar Conference Grounds in California.
Bibliography
;Books
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
;Books about or related to Gregory Bateson
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*Possamai, Tiziano (2009). ''Dove il pensiero esita. Gregory Bateson e il doppio vincolo.'' Edizioni Ombre Corte.
*Possamai, Tiziano (2022). ''Where Thought Hesitates. Gregory Bateson and the Double Bind''. Mimesis International.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
;Published works
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Authors "Chapter 1: Communication" and "Chapter 5: The Actors and the Setting" in
* With
Ray_Birdwhistell, H.W. Brosin & N.A. McQuown, authors the chapter "Remarks on the by-products of The Natural History of an Interview research project" in
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
;Documentary film
* , 2 reels.
* , 2 reels.
* , 2 reels.
* , 2 reels. The film was an inductee of the 1999
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...
list.
* , 2 reels.
* , 1 reel.
* , 1 reel.
See also
*
Ray Birdwhistell
*
*
Complex systems
*
Constructivist epistemology
*
Family therapy
*
Holism
*
Ignacio Matte Blanco
*
Macy Conferences
*
Mary Catherine Bateson
*
Mind-body problem
*
Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann (; ; December 8, 1927 – November 6, 1998) was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory.
Biography
Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Free State of Prussia, where his father's ...
*
Second-order cybernetics
*
Systems philosophy Systems philosophy is a discipline aimed at constructing a new philosophy (in the sense of worldview) by using systems concepts. The discipline was first described by Ervin Laszlo in his 1972 book ''Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New ...
*
Systems theory in anthropology
Systems theory in anthropology is an interdisciplinary, non-representative, non-referential, and non-Cartesian approach that brings together natural and social sciences to understand society in its complexity. The basic idea of a system theory in ...
*
Systems thinking
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective actio ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Gregory Bateson comments, p. 215.
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
Bateson Idea Group(official)
Bateson Idea Groupat
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
International Bateson InstituteInstitute for Intercultural Studies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bateson, Gregory
1904 births
1980 deaths
People from Grantchester
People educated at Charterhouse School
British emigrants to the United States
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
English anthropologists
English atheists
Communication theorists
British consciousness researchers and theorists
Cyberneticists
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
General semantics
Humor researchers
Philosophers of mind
Psychological anthropologists
British semioticians
Systems psychologists
British systems scientists
University of California, Santa Cruz faculty
Bateson family
Articles containing video clips